Now, If I Can Only Figure Out How To Do This

A few days ago I wrote a post about everyday forgiveness— especially as it relates to marriage. All those annoying, hurtful-to-my-feelings, rubbing-each-other-the-wrong-way kinds of interactions that take place everyday. If we don’t keep a continuous stream of forgiving and giving mercy to each other, we end up embittered and prickly— and pretty soon our once beautiful love story turns sour.

Your responses warmed me to my core, but one jumped out and caught my breath, “Thank you for sharing. Now, if I can only figure out how.” Behind those words is a real woman with real stuff and a real desire to do the hard work of loving well. I hear my younger self in this woman’s raw breath-prayer.

A lesson learned a long, long time ago…

I was in my early twenties, married with a baby, and we were poor, living on an unrealistic budget, just scraping by.  Phil was fully absorbed in grad school, and I was lonely. And needy. Not very mature. And— way too often— a hot mess.

I brought all my messy insecurities with me once a week when my mentor, Muriel Cook would spend a couple of hours pouring wisdom into my thirsty soul. She’d open her floppy leather bible, unconsciously smoothing the pages with her elegant hands, like a mother caressing her child.

And she’d listen as I spilled words of angst and shame and yearning. She heard me, validating my grief over the gaping difference between who I wanted to be, and who I really was.

For reasons I couldn’t grasp back then, Muriel pointed me, over and over again, to forgiveness. A strange topic to return to—or so it seemed to me. Muriel hadn’t yet written the book I now open almost every time I need to know how to help others, but she was honing her message on women like me. In her words, 

““In almost every problem situation, after peeling off layers of grief and distress, I find a wounded spirit or an unresolved resentment. Usually it is the result of a hurt that hasn’t been dealt with or a pain that hasn’t been relinquished to God.”

Now remember, we’re talking about forgiving those closest to us— me forgiving my husband for trampling on my feelings, and my husband forgiving me for an offense I barely recognize, let alone regret. Forgiving as an act of restoring love. 

Muriel used an every day story to create a kind of film clip I review over and over again in my mind:

“Every morning your alarm clock goes off, waking you from sleep, right?”

I agreed, adding that baby John Mark often woke me up well before my six o’clock alarm.

“Well,” she continued, “when that alarm clock goes off, you have a choice to make. And while you’re making that choice two very real parts of you struggle to decide whether or not to get up— your emotions, and your will.” 

Okay, that made sense to me. I’d been struggling for years to get up a little earlier to read my Bible before my day of must-do tasks crowded out my good intentions. Even knowing the right thing to do, it was still only about a 50/50 chance that I’d comply with the alarm I’d set the night before.

 I scooted forward, listening to what I sensed might change all that. Muriel continued, “The choice is this: will you obey your emotions? Or will you obey your will? 

Muriel let the word, choice, hang in the air between us. I have a choice. I always have a choice.

“If you choose to obey your emotions, you’ll stretch and yawn and snuggle into your bed for more of that delicious sleep you’re enjoying. And if you do that, your will is forced to stay in bed with you. You’ll get up later than you know you need. A choice you’re likely to regret.”

The ultimate storyteller, Muriel let me absorb the truth of her words before she continued. “However, if you choose to obey your will, you’ll stretch and yawn, and get out of bed with your emotions complaining and maybe even yelling in protest. You’ll make your way to the shower and turn on the water, all the while wishing you could go back to bed. 

But something happens about half way through that hot shower— your emotions catch up with your will. You’re glad you got up! You’ll pat your emotions on the back with a huge smile and congratulate your will for your victory. You made the right choice.”

I know you’re thinking exactly what I was thinking at this point, “Huh? What has this to do with forgiving?”

But Muriel was nothing if not practical in her approach to spiritual issues of the heart. 

““Diane, this is how forgiveness works. To choose to forgive when someone has hurt you is a matter of the will— always. You will rarely feel like forgiving.  But if you obey your will, your emotions will eventually follow— always.”

This is how to do the work of forgiving those everyday annoyances that will otherwise create all sorts of cranky, crabby conflict.

We choose. I haul my will out of its lazy place of slumber to choose to forgive.

And low and behold, my emotions eventually catch up! I feel all the feels of grace and mercy and peace and hope. I’m actually, honestly, glad I got up! I feel the freedom to love generously and graciously once again.

But please, a word of warning:

Note the word ‘eventually’. Your feelings, those hard-to-harness emotions are untidy and unpredictable. Emotions are easily influenced by the peers they try to please: pride, insecurity, ambition, self-absorption, self-righteousness… or grace, mercy, humility, love. Add in your body’s noisy clamoring for attention: hunger, low blood sugar, fatigue, sleeplessness, illness.

All these factor in to how long it takes your emotions to catch up with your will. Sometimes we just have to wait it out. But the eventually is coming… eventually. I guarantee you. You may have to deploy all your reserves of steadfast perseverance until those feelings finally catch up with your choosing to forgive. 

The bottom line truth is this:

Life is too good and too short to ruminate over picky, petty provocations that don’t actually matter.

Which reminds me of a challenge the prophet-leader Moses put to his people:

"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life…”

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 NLT

Today and every day, we— the forgiven ones— choose forgiveness. 

We choose life. We choose love.

From my heart,

Di